Nashcon 2005 Report

I had a wonderful time at Nashcon. It is truly a wargaming con. You had ancient era miniatures, Napoleonics, chariot races, aerial dogfights, a battleship card game going on, almost everything you could want in a wargaming con.

But I was there to play Epic:Armageddon. Let's get on to it.

Mike and I started out at 4AM Saturday morning to make sure we were there in time. We arrived at 745 and meandered around waiting for the event to start.

With all pictures, click on them for a full sized view.

Here are my forces, the Ultramarines 3rd Company with support elements. I have six squads of tactical Marines, backed up by terminators from the 1st Company, plus a detachment of Predator tanks and another detachment of Whirlwinds providing fire support. That big ugly white guy behind the Terminators? That's a Titan. He's 1/3rd of my force total all by himself.

The first battle was with Neil, he beat me to a pulp with his Orks during the Ides of March Epic Tournament back in March. This time he played Chaos Space Marines.

Most of his army was dropping in from orbit, so he started with a very light force on the board. He marched all of his forces around the edge of the board, all over to my left flank, keeping out of the range of the Whirlwinds. My forces cautiously advanced, taking up positions around one of his objectives. The other was way across the board and I didn't have the forces to cover it, so it was ignored.

Turn two saw the advancement of his forces into contact with one of my tactical detachments, and we slugged it out, ending in the destruction of that detachment for me. I moved my other tactical detachment over to work on the survivors and was supported by the Titan.

Turn three was when the fresh Chaos troops arrived. They dropped right between my blitzkrieg objective and my forces. We fought and he reduced my Marines to just the Commander and his retinue. He also destroyed my Whirlwinds while trying to attack my titan. The good news is my Terminators teleported in and secured his Blitzkrieg objective. The turn ended in no winner, both of us had two points.

Turn four is where things went wrong for Neil. He threw wave after wave of troops at the titan, trying to dislodge it off the objective it was holding on to, and it failed horribly. I made my best die rolls of the game, and he made his worst rolls. I ended up destroying or driving off most of his forces, leaving him in control of one secondary objective, while I held all three on his side of the board. I won! I received 18 out of a possible 20 points for the win.

Round 2 was against David, playing orks. I faced a literal sea of orks, garrisoned in the middle of the board.

In this game, I could not make a save for anything! I moved my tactical detachments up to cover the objectives, and he kept pounding away at them, killing a stand or two a turn. His fighta-bommaz (the orks misspell everything) killed a Whirlwind, which hurt. I lost my second template to cause even more damage by way of them. I marched my Predator tanks around the flank, and that was how turn 1 ended.

Turn two opened with a bang. I opened fire on his gunwagonz, breaking them. I started to pull back my Tacticals, as I did not want them in close combat with a horde of orks. The titan kept pummeling away at the sea of bodies, causing massive damage to them, but the orks just kept coming.

Turn three saw the tide of battle change. My Terminators teleported into his unprotected backfield and destroyed the broken gunwagonz. My titan also broke his other gunwagonz detachment. He threw everything he had in range of the Terminators at them, but they took it all and kept smiling. Another march of the Predators brought them into range of the last broken gunwagonz, but because they marched, they could not fire.

The fourth turn was the kicker. David started bringing his forces back towards the objectives that I had captured, but he mismeasured and ended up 1.5cm out of range. I finished destroying anything that was in range of the objectives and won the game 2-0, gaining me another 18 victory points. I'm now 2-0 and my toughest fight is in front of me.

Battle three was against Michael and his Eldar. I don't know how it got through the playtesting process, but the Eldar are very overpowered for their points.

There are no pictures for this battle because I was too busy fighting for my life the entire time. He just wiped me out like I wasn't even there. He even killed the Titan without much trouble. At the end of turn 3, my Terminators were in position, but he was able to contest the blitzkrieg objective, and there was nothing I could do to stop him from taking my objectives. He won 18 out of a possible 20. The good news was I was the only player of the day who was able to score points against him at all, albeit only 2 points.

I ended up in Third place overall, behind Michael and Greg, who went 2-0-1 in his battles. Quite a respectable showing, more than I had hoped for. And I got my usual 2-1 record again. This time, the wins were on the winners side of the bracket, usually I lose that first game and end up on the losers side of things.

Mike and I ended up back home at around 12:45 this morning, a good end to a 21 hour day.